City Diary

12:01AM BST 02 Aug 2002

Edited by Adam Jay (Filed: 02/08/2002)

All of a flap over batty house guests

Chris Potts, a director at Winterflood Securities, was relaxing at home in Limpsfield on Sunday night when he and his wife were disturbed by their son emerging from his bedroom. There was a bat swimming in his glass of water, he calmly informed his parents.

Pretending to stay cool, Potts pottered upstairs, to discover that the bat had escaped his watery grave and was flapping in the hallway. "It flew into the bathroom, so I shut the door very quickly, before getting a fishing net and escorting it out of the window."

Relieved, he looked around. And saw another. It was the last straw. "It was 11.30, but I dragged my gardener out of bed and he came round to help." They found a third above a pelmet, "and then my wife came running out of the bedroom. I grabbed a step-ladder and found a lovely one perched on top of the four-poster. That's when she ran down the stairs." (His wife, not the bat.)

Since the weekend, Potts has braved a look in the attic. There's a whole colony there. "On Wednesday night we counted 63 flying out of a loose tile, bang on 9pm."

He's got the batmen in, who have assured him that although his house guests will probably be back at the same time next year, they'll be on their way in a fortnight. I wouldn't bat on it.

These joints are jumping

Chris O'Donnell, chief exec of Smith & Nephew, gave lunch to the press yesterday, passing round delicious-looking hips and joints to go with the veg. "You missed a good lunch," he tells me, when I catch up with him later. "The joints were artificial ones, I hasten to add."

Any takers? "No, unfortunately. Sales are going pretty well, so we don't really need to sell over lunch to journalists. I don't think they could afford it anyway, at about £3,500 a joint." He should pop down to Lambeth. You can pick up a far cheaper joint there.

Accounting for sex at lunchtime

Last month, I wrote how Ernst & Young accountants had their lunch hours spiced up by a regular floor show from a couple in an adjacent office block. Now it seems the bean counters are following suit (birthday, perhaps?).

A front page article in this week's Accountancy Age claims "accountants and other professionals are as likely to have sex at lunchtime as they are to have an alcoholic drink" (we can safely leave journalists out of that equation).

"Only one in 100 drinks alcohol," it continues, "the same number as goes to the bookies, plays computer games and claims to have sex.

"Given that professionals take longer on average for lunch than the rest of the working population - 29 minutes compared to 27 minutes - perhaps it's not that surprising." 29 minutes? There's either some dodgy accounting going on, or that includes the cigarette and shower.

One strike and they're out

Staff at financial PR firm Finsbury had an equally shocking lunch hour on Wednesday. When lightning hit their building, it set off the fire alarm, forcing those inside, out.

"Some faster than others," explains one bedraggled PR person. "Our lovely friends the firemen ordered us to get out and stay out, so they could 'isolate the problem'. If there had been a fire, a fair few would have been long frazzled. It just shows our commitment to work," she tries, spinning to the last.